A Cat for a Rat
by Varmint
Summary: Junkrat has a new friend. And he's real proud of it. The kitten hasn't died yet, after all. One-shot! First in the 'Junkrat and His Strays' series!


It wasn't easy.

Well, thinking properly about it, nothing was ever truly easy.

Like finding a proper ratio of blackpowder to blast power when he had begun to build his own bombs. Or like keeping one's self alive in the dangerous Australian Outback even after it had gone to piss all hell. Or like- Wait a minute. What had he been thinking about that was so difficult?

... _Right..._ What was it? There was a reason for all of this thinking... And Junkrat didn't always _think_ so for him to actually time out of his day to do it meant that it truly was something important.

It was important... He wouldn't be inside of his room pondering about it if it wasn't. Instead he'd be off somewhere in the base, doing whatever came to his mind as most interesting. If there wasn't something keeping him inside of the room that had been assigned to him and Roadhog, he would be outside right now, getting into all kinds of delicious mayhem.

But _what_ was keeping him in here?

The skinny Junker scratched vigorously at the top of his head, as if trying to stimulate his brain into reminding him as to what he had been thinking about.

Then, just when he was about to call it quits and go off to find something interesting to do (because there was no reason to stay in here if he couldn't even remember why he had decided to come in), the young man was reminded.

A soft purring noise brought him out of his thoughts. And the slightly moist nuzzle of a tiny nose running along his knuckles made him look down.

"Almost forgot about ya!" The bright smile that came onto his face was pure and unrestricted. "Good thing ya reminded me, right, Kookaburra?"

The small kitten looked up at him with bright green eyes. But after a moment of looking at him directly in the eyes, the small animal decided to turn back to what it had previously been doing and rubbed his head against the blonde's fingers once more.

Sneaking the little critter inside the Overwatch base had not been easy. Not because of the sneaking in part, no, that had been pretty simple actually, he'd just run in like holy hell and refused to speak to anyone, which was actually rather normal of him. The hard part had been being able to take care of the small animal without alerting anyone as to its presence.

Not even Roadie knew about him. The kitten was Junkrat's little secret and he was set on keeping this one.

He had been out and about on his most recent mission when he'd found the small critter. After all of the fighting against Talon agents had ended and they were just waiting for pickup, the young man had decided to drift away from the rest of his teammates and scavenge. Old habits died hard. And he still enjoyed finding all sorts of shiny treasures, even though there truly was no need for him to do so.

As he'd taken a particularly shiny looking trinket from one of the men that had been knocked unconscious by one of his explosives while he whistled the small pieces he could remember of a lullaby that dealt with the word 'kookaburra', a noise of distress had piqued his interest. It had been an animal, that much had been clear from the start. Junkrat had heard any of cries like these from the animals in the Outback to know when they were dangerous and when not. And this one had not sounded dangerous. So he'd gone to the pile of rubble the noise had been coming from and moved some rocks around.

Dirty, dingy, and soot filled fluff ran into him as soon as it was freed.

The small animal had given Junkrat quite the scare when it'd jumped out of the rubble. He'd actually reacted almost violently and gone to grab at his gun before he remembered that he'd left it behind with Roadhog.

But he was kind of happy that he hadn't been able to use his gun on the small animal. Especially seeing how he'd immediately taken a shine to it, seeing how it reminded him a lot of himself.

Its fur was supposed to be white. But it was so dirty, that it looked gray. And he was underfed, criminally so. And it was missing its right hind leg. And it mewed adorably and looked up at him with such big eyes that he had kind of refused to leave him behind. So after dumping all of its contents, he'd stashed the animal inside of the satchel he kept on his hip and rushed back to the rest of his team to not arouse any suspicions.

Kookaburra had seemed like a fitting name for the kitten. So that was what he called it now.

"Small, adorable," Junkrat smirked as he began to run his good hand over the animal's head, only to suddenly have it bite his fingers and glare up at him. "And _dangerous_. Just like me!"

The critter seemed to scoff at his words before it sat up and began to paw at his thigh. It began to purr. And Junkrat had the distinct feeling that it may just like him as much as he liked it.

Days had passed since he'd brought the animal in and still no one knew about it. And he had done his best to keep it that way, so he was proud of himself for being incredibly sneaky in all of his actions. Especially because the cat seemed to enjoy eating the food he stole from his teammates. (Especially that delicious meat thing McCree cooked up. It was rather easy to separate him from it, though. A few explosions near him were enough of a diversion to make him worry about others and leave his food to make sure everything was safe.)

(On a side note, the giant monkey was now thinking about locking up all explosive devices to keep the base from suffering any further Junkrat related incidents.)

It wasn't easy to keep the little feller around. Especially with the rules clearly saying 'No pets' or something of the like. He wasn't sure. He'd ignored the giant baboon when he'd gone over the rules with Roadie and him.

Once the cat had stopped pawing at his thigh, it looked up at him with a steady gaze. And from the way its little claws began to dig into him, Junkrat was more than sure of what it wanted.

"Time ta get grub fo Kookaburra." He picked the animal up and placed him on his shoulder, ignoring the way its claws dug into his skin, and got up from his bed.

The room he shared with Roadhog was a mess. Spare parts, both active and inactive weapons, clothes, and many different bits and pieces were strewn haphazardly all over his side. And Roadhog's massive bed took up all of his side, so the only reason _he_ seemed clean was because he didn't have any space to mess up. But among all of the mess, Junkrat had made a bed of sorts out of one of that girl's- was it Hana? Maybe Hina... Hawa? Eh, something with an H- blankets, which he had managed to take from her one night she'd left it outside her room for some reason.

Even though the little kitten enjoyed sleeping curled up on top of his head much more than using the blanket he had gone through the trouble of acquiring. But Junkrat really wasn't bothered by this. He enjoyed having Kookaburra close to him when he slept. Especially because whenever he chose to fall asleep, Roadhog wasn't always there. His sleeping patterns were erratic after all. And the old man _did_ need his sleep. So they barely coincided when it came to sleeping. Which was a good thing because it allowed Kookaburra and he to sleep without worrying about getting caught most of the time.

Kookaburra was a true genius. And he adopted many of Junkrat's characteristics, especially the erratic sleep pattern. Which was for the best, for it allowed them to go off and roam the Overwatch headquarters at ungodly hours of the night when everyone else was asleep.

"Off on another adventure, yeah?" He questioned his kitten softly as he walked as quietly as he could, mindful of Roadhog's harsh snores as the other man slept on the other side of their room. "Think we'll find any treasure?"

..~..~..

Quick A/N: Well this is my first Overwatch post. But hopefully, it will not be my last! Hope you all enjoy reading it! And don't forget to review, follow and favorite! And this will be part of a series titled 'Junkrat and His Strays', so there'll be more one-shots to come!

The sequel is now up! It's called _'Three Pups, a Kookaburra, and a Rat'._ Check it out if you feel like reading some more about Junkrat being unbelievably adorable.


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